Wisconsin Commission estimates recount will cost $3.5 million

Election officials in Wisconsin estimate that a recount of the state's vote, as requested by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, will cost about $3.5 million.

According to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, the state must receive the $3.5 million from the Stein campaign, or the other candidate who petitioned for a recount, by 4:30 p.m. Tuesday for the audit to continue.

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Stein campaign spokeswoman Meleiza Figueroa said the campaign planned to pay the $3.5 million to fund the recount.

Stein, whose third-party campaign for president got only a tiny fraction of the vote nationally in November, successfully petitioned to initiate the recount last week in the state, which Donald Trump won by some 22,000 votes. Stein reports that she has raised more than $6 million in her call for a recount in Wisconsin and two other states that Trump won narrowly, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

There is no evidence that voting machines in Wisconsin or other swing states were compromised or that there was any widespread voter fraud. The White House has aggressively pushed back on any such allegations to affirm that the election results are legitimate.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign, while maintaining that it has not seen sufficient evidence to suggest that the election results were compromised, has said its lawyers will attend the recount proceedings.

Republicans have criticized the effort as desperate. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, defending the legitimacy of his state’s tally in the presidential election, said Monday that it is “hard to justify” a recount to taxpayers.

In a Facebook post Monday, Walker also rejected the suggestion that Wisconsin’s results were wrong. In addition to citing Donald Trump’s margin of victory there, Walker said Wisconsin’s electoral process is “fair” and “protected.”